The Journey of Research in Computing: Basic vs. Applied Research – Specialization vs. Multidisciplinarity

The Doctoral College Resilient Embedded Systems, established in October 2018, provides the framework for discussing the future of computing with experts and deriving the necessary strategies not only for research and teaching but also for managing the inevitable ethical challenges that lie ahead.

In a keynote speech, Kaushik Roy (Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, USA) will talk about the need for neuro-inspired methods for re-engineering computing. Advances in machine learning, notably deep learning, have led to computers matching or surpassing human performance in several cognitive tasks including vision, speech and natural language processing. However, implementation of such neural algorithms in conventional "von-Neumann" architectures are several orders of magnitude more area and power expensive than the biological brain. Hence, fundamentally new approaches to sustain exponential growth in performance at high energy-efficiency are needed.

It's the End of Computers as We Know Them

Kaushik Roy's talk will give an impulse for a panel discussion moderated by Josef Broukal, in which Jochen Borenich (COO Kapsch BusinessCom), Christian Kollmitzer (Vice Rector Technical College Vienna), Kaushik Roy (Purdue University) and Hannes Werthner (Dean of the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien) will investigate the significance of these changes for research and teaching.

The end of the computer as we know it today is only a matter of time: manycore, neuromorphic or quantum computing are no longer science fiction. And they raise questions of social responsibility: When brain-inspired computing is already an emerging precursor, what happens when computers become more intelligent than humans?

How does research deal with these developments, what quality of research does it need, what kind of researchers needs to tackle these completely new challenges? And who takes responsibility for these developments?